The house wasn't the same to her any more. Ever since her father had died in the accident last month Sarah was unable to view her home the same as she had before.

 It was a brisk autumn evening and all seemed normal, Sarah’s younger siblings had come home from school around four o'clock and her mother was in the kitchen cooking chicken and dumplings, a favorite of the Lewis family. Mark lewis however was trying to repair the roof of the house after a storm had caused a tree to fall on the house, resulting in a gaping hole in the roof. Mark, being the adventurous  dad he was, decided to do the housework on his own knowing it would save him some money to do it on his own. He took his ladder out from the garage and climbed to the roof of the house about thirty stories up. 

At the time Sarah was in her bedroom listening to music on her cell phone as a normal sixteen year old girl would in the evening while studying. Mark had been on the roof for about twenty minutes when she noticed a cracking sound coming from above her. She thought nothing of the noise and continued drafting her essay for english class. 

This noise however, was much more crucial than it may have seemed on the surface. The cracking was coming from the wooden supports for the roof of the house which were starting to crack and break under Mark’s weight without his knowledge. Suddenly the large beam holding up the entire front side of the homes roof snapped and the roof collapsed, sending Mark tumbling down through the roof as well as the layer of wood that was the attic floor. 

Hearing the thud of Mark’s landing, Sarah’s mother Suzanne and younger brother Timothy came running up the stairs from the kitchen to find Mark lying unconscious on the floor of the guest bedroom with a hole in the ceiling above him which he had fallen through. Suzanne yelled for Sarah to call 911 which she did promptly.

Mark was pronounced dead on the scene by the paramedics who had showed up to the house about ten minutes after Sarah had been told by the 911 operator that they were on the way. It would later be determined that the cause of Marks passing was the head trauma he suffered from the fall.  

From this moment, which had happened almost three years ago, Sarah felt that her own home had become a symbol of grief for her family because of the loss of her father. The house had not endured any physical changes ,but the loss of her father had completely changed Sarah’s perception of what home is.